Report: Senior Citizens Going Back To Work To Keep Homes

Report: Senior Citizens Going Back To Work To Keep Homes

09/22/2009 01:31 PM

America&#39;s senior citizens are being forced out of retirement and into the job market just to keep their homes.

America's senior citizens are being forced out of retirement and into the job market just to keep their homes. That's the finding in a study by Experience Works, the largest nonprofit provider of training and employment for older workers in America.

The organization looked at two-thousand people over the age of 55 and discovered 46% had been forced to find work to avoid homelessness during the recession.

"These people are at the age where they understandably thought their job-searching years were behind them," said Experience Works President and CEO Cynthia Metzler.

The study found a large percentage of respondents had no intention of working past their 60th birthday and more than a third had already retired. An amazing 90% of respondents aged 76 and older said they now planned to keep working for the next five years.

Finding work has been difficult for many. The Labor Department says there were two million unemployed workers over the age of 55 in August. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said they thought their age was a barrier in competing for work with younger people.